


the quiet, the violence, the shadow at the door

by raven (singlecrow)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (do the kids these days even know what a five things fic is?), Archivist Sasha James, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, In a manner of speaking, M/M, Scottish Cabin, five things, killing the archivist frees the others
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:16:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24902200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/raven
Summary: Four things that never happened to Jonathan Sims, and one thing that never happened to everyone else.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 15
Kudos: 176





	the quiet, the violence, the shadow at the door

**Author's Note:**

> Strictly speaking, no archive warnings do apply, but I dithered over "major character death" and there is some violence here even if it's not graphic, detailed content notes are at the bottom.

_i. awl_

“Do you think,” Martin says, “if you got a whole bunch of helium balloons, tied them to a chair and strapped yourself into it, you’d fly away?”

Jon considers the question. “I don’t know,” he says. “I feel like that shouldn’t work, but I can’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t.”

“Me neither,” Martin says, with the amused huff of breath which indicates he’s smiling. “I guess you would have been able to tell me, before.”

“Not exactly,” Jon says. “I would have been able to tell you if it had ever happened, not if it were possible. Knowledge isn’t the same as understanding. Why are you asking, anyway?”

“Oh.” Another smile that Jon can picture with no effort. “There’s a sign just behind your head. No helium balloons allowed, only it looks someone brought some inside anyway? They’re all hanging inside the station roof looking really sad.”

Jon can picture that too. “That sounds rather pretty, actually.”

"It is a bit." Martin puts a hand on his arm. “I’m going to M&S to get some sandwiches. Do you want anything else?”

“Millionaire's shortbread,” Jon says, rummaging in his pockets for some change and handing it over. “Not for me, for Georgie. She’ll fuss if we don’t caramelise her blood sugar.”

Martin laughs and Jon hears him stand up. “You’re sure you’re okay, Jon?”

“I’m fine,” Jon says, and means it. He listens vaguely for the station announcements over the buzz of the concourse and Martin's receding footsteps. They’re going to Pride in Brighton today, along with some old university friends of Georgie’s and, allegedly, Jon’s; he’d felt an obscure need to do it, to stand up and be counted, even if London seemed too loud and crowded for him this time around. Brighton isn’t that far from where Jon grew up and Martin’s always up for a trip to the seaside. They can feel the sunshine on their skin, hear the seagulls shrieking and the crunch of waves and sand.

“What are you going to tell people about... you know?” Georgie asks, once Martin has got the picnic supplies and they've found the right platform. She's already been in to the train carriage and staked out a table for the three of them. Melanie was somewhere out in Devon filming an episode for her YouTube channel and will meet them there. "Oh, wait, Jon, don't move. Excuse me, sorry, my friend needs that seat, he's visually impaired."

“Why does that stop him from standing up?” says a querulous woman's voice, changing in pitch as she turns away from Georgie to speak to someone else. “Bet he’s not really blind, people will say anything to get allowances these days, I read in the papers—“

Jon smiles to himself and reaches out, catching her arm successfully. "Trust me, I am,” he says, and then: “I had a psychotic break and I picked up the nearest sharp object.”

“Ah,” Georgie says, as the woman shakes off Jon’s hand and scurries swiftly away down the carriage, “ _that’s_ what you’re telling people.”

Martin had suggested they read up on illnesses that cause sudden blindness in adults, but there aren’t actually very many things in that category that don't involve having a stroke. It’ll take Jon some time to figure out exactly what he wants people to think. In the meantime, he was the avatar of the Eye for a long time: too long not to use trauma as a weapon.

“It's a work in progress,” he says to Georgie. “Everything's fine. Martin got you some shortbread.”

“You mean, you did,” Martin says. “Your idea, your money.”

“He loves me,” Georgie agrees. “Better not tell Melanie, she’ll think you have designs on me again."

“I have no designs at all,” Jon says. He really doesn’t; his only desire for today is to enjoy Martin and Georgie's company, and Melanie sniping at him. To listen to the queer slogans that haven’t changed since he was an undergraduate; to know his own freedom, and those for whom he bought it. The rest of the journey goes without incident, other than Georgie eating Jon's sandwiches as well as her own. They're lurking just outside the station, waiting for Melanie, when Martin wanders off a minute or two and comes back. 

“Put your hand out,” he says. Jon expects the remains of the shortbread to be placed into his palm. Instead, Martin encircles his wrist with thumb and forefinger. “Hold still.”

Georgie laughs, delightedly. Jon feels Martin wrap a ribbon around his wrist and knot it. There's a strange upwards tug, and then understanding dawns. “You got me a balloon.”

“It’s got a basic Pride flag on one side and an ace flag on the other,” Georgie says. "It's very colourful and very sparkly. Everything you hate in this world, basically."

Jon isn't an idiot; he knows Georgie and Martin are worried about losing track of him at this first big, crowded event, and that the giant rainbow-shaped object will certainly help them find him again. He also knows that Martin will get rid of it in a second if he asks. But after Melanie has turned up and the four of them set out, joining the great rhythms of the crowds, he finds he likes it. An ordinary thing, pulling him, taking him somewhere new; a binding he can choose to cast off.

*

_ii. the death of the archivist_

Jon waits for Tim in one of the hidden rooms down in the tunnels, sitting cross-legged on top of a table. It would be uncomfortable, if this place weren't starting to shape itself around him. He doesn't have to wait for long. Tim is breathing hard, as though he's been running all the way here. He stands on the threshold and doesn't come any further. 

“Angus Stacey,” Jon says, when Tim doesn’t speak. “Yes, that one surprised me as well.”

“You’re supposed to know them all,” Tim says, still out of breath. “All of the statements, they just end up in your head like, like _parasites_.”

“I don’t inject them like heroin," Jon objects. “I have to read them one by one, just as you do." 

"You are nothing like me," Tim says, getting steadier now. "You're the avatar of the Eye. You're its fucking _thing_."

“I assure you, I'm well aware of that." It occurs to Jon that he's sounding a lot like Elias. "Now. Angus Stacey.”

“He died,” Tim says, with a rough and sincere reverence, “and the others were free. If the Archivist dies, it releases the others. Me, Martin, Basira, Daisy. Not Sasha. It's too late for Sasha."

“Yes, it is,” Jon says. “But you're here for the others. Of course you are.”

“Don’t,” Tim says. He sounds like he's starting to panic, like he was expecting to just run in here and do what needed to be done, that there wouldn't be time for discussion. There’s ––yes, that _is_ a length of lead pipe in his hands. Elias really does have far too much influence on his subordinates. “Don’t try and talk your way out of this. It’s for the best. And you need…”

“Please do finish that sentence,” Jon says, when Tim lapses again. “What do I need? To get out more? Be more like the other children? Do I need to be fucked straight or put down like an animal? It’s so hard to keep up.”

“That one,” Tim says, “ _animal_ ”––but Jon isn’t Elias, and he’s tired of playing games. 

“Everything you need is here,” he says, using both hands to gesture around him. He's perched on the middle of the table, surrounded by whatever helpful items he could retrieve from the Archive or from artefact storage. There are knives here, and a garrotte, and a bottle of something that might genuinely be hemlock. Syringes; snake venom; his own axe. “Just choose something.”

He's perversely gratified to see Tim's expression change, as his eyes finally pierce the dimness and he puts together what he's looking at. The only light in the room comes from the kerosene lanterns mounted at regular intervals across the floor, so Jon didn't bring anything that might cast a spark.

"Jesus," Tim says. “You were… waiting for me.”

"Yes," Jon says.

"And you're not – what, you're not going to fight back?" Tim sounds plaintive, almost resentful, like this wasn't the plan. "You're not even going to try?"

“How could I?” Jon shrugs. “Let's say I do, and somehow or other I manage to get away. You back off and have to try again. Next time, you and Daisy hold me down, and Basira does it. Or Daisy does it, while you hold me down, and Melanie distracts Elias. I can't leave the Institute and I can't outrun you forever. It’s better this way."

Better the quiet room, the poison or the cut. Tim comes inside properly and looks at the things on the table, careful to avoid walking into the lanterns. For a moment he's close enough for Jon to feel his body heat, the movement of blood beneath his skin. 

"Well?" Jon says, after a few minutes have passed with no further movement. “What are you afraid of?”

“Honestly?” Tim’s hand passes over syringes and wire, settles on a small blade. Messy but straightforward. “Honestly, what I’m afraid of?”

“Yes?”

“Martin.” 

"Ah." Jon thinks about calling the whole thing off, at least for the length of time it would take to write a note, then doesn’t. If you love something, set it free. "Right. Yes."

“Jon,” Tim says, but can’t finish whatever it is he wants to say. Jon nods. He goes back to sitting cross-legged on the table, his throat and wrists exposed. He’ll wait.

*

_iii. there but for the grace of God_

He's tempted to pretend he was never here. Sasha is crying very quietly, her head in her hands, and Jon only popped into her office to grab a file. If he moves softly, she won't hear him leave and he can go and fetch Tim at his leisure. If not Tim, then Martin, who can bustle in with a cup of tea and handle whatever hearts-to-heart might be required. He's already taken a step towards the door before he remembers. The London mayoral elections are today, and most of the Institute staff either came in late, like him and Sasha, or headed home early, like Tim and Martin. The Archive staff is currently just the two of them, plus whatever's in the shadows.

Jon briefly considers leaving Sasha to it anyway. Then he goes in, making sure his footsteps are as heavy as possible, and says, "Sasha."

Sasha looks up. "Oh, it's you," she says, which isn't promising.

"It's me," Jon says, already regretting this. But she doesn’t tell him to get out, and when he digs in his pockets for a couple of handkerchiefs she takes them from him.

“What, you just have these,” she says, hiccupping into the fabric. “What else have you got on you, smelling salts and denture glue?”

“I was raised by an elderly battleaxe with standards,” Jon says. “What’s wrong?"

“Christ, what do you _think_ ,” Sasha says, and Jon decides abruptly that the Archive isn’t the best place for this conversation. He fetches both their coats and she complains a little but he manages to hustle her out of the building and out onto Millbank. Night is falling around them and it's well past ordinary knocking-off time, but going to a pub together doesn't seem quite right. Jon doesn't know Sasha all that well, even after these last few years of working together. Tim and Sasha form a unit, Martin tolerates Jon for some reason, and the four of them usually only come together in mortal peril or when Elias corrals them at the Christmas party. They're colleagues, comrades-in-arms, even, but they're not really friends.

No pub, then. They start walking and by some kind of silent consensus, they end up at the granny café round the back of Westminster Abbey, usually frequented by the Institute staff at lunchtime. It's only still open because half the seating area has been given over to a polling station, and they're the only paying customers. Jon goes up to the counter and gets two cups of coffee and a packet of assorted biscuits. 

“This won’t help,” Sasha warns him, as he sets the coffee on the table, but the fresh air seems to have perked her up anyway, a little colour coming into her cheeks. 

“Mmm, I know.” Jon takes a sip of the coffee, which is steaming hot and awful. “I don't actually belong to the Martin Blackwood school of consolation."

"Oh, shut up," Sasha says, looking down into her own coffee as though scrying it for revelation. "Fuck. Jon. How am I going to do this?"

Jon doesn't have to ask what _this_ is; it was here that Sasha told him and Martin about the whole thing in the first place, fourteen eldritch powers over minestrone and the Unknowing with the bread roll. Back then it seemed fanciful, distant. By instinct, Jon touches the scars on the nape of his neck, and is wearied by his younger self.

Off her look, Sasha knows what he's thinking. "How can I be the avatar of the Beholding?" she asks. "What does that even mean? How am I going to stop the end of the world?” 

“I really don't know," Jon says. "I have no idea at all."

Sasha peers moodily across the rim of the cup. “What, no, _oh, you’ll figure it out, Sasha_? How about, _don't worry, Sasha, everything's going to be fine_?"

“No.” Jon's hands are on the back of his neck again. “I don't know if either of those things are true. And I can't lie to you."

"Yeah," Sasha says. She lets out a breath. "Thanks, though. For not trying. Can I have a custard cream?"

Jon extracts one from the biscuit packet and gives it to her, and they sit without speaking for a while, listening to the low hum of the café staff and the tellers on the other side of the partition. The returning officer is dealing with a query. The Abbey bells are marking evensong and the usual buses are going past on the street. It all sounds so normal, Jon thinks with a quiet desperation. London at the fade of day. He gives Sasha the other custard cream for good measure.

"Thanks," Sasha says again, and then: "Why are you doing this? Why are you being nice to me?"

“I'm scared,” Jon says, staring into the coffee grounds. His knuckles are white around the mug. “I think this could be the end. Gertrude didn't leave behind nearly enough to prepare you for this. Elias could have picked me and I would have broken if he had. I think this is too much for anyone to bear and I want to help. Will that do, _Archivist_?” 

She flinches at the last part, and he didn't have to say it. But Jon doesn't like being compelled. He won't sleep well tonight, now, and Martin will bring him tea in the morning and he won't taste the sugar. 

"Sorry," Sasha says, flustered. "I didn't mean—shit. It just happens."

"Yeah," Jon says, suddenly too tired to complain about it. "It just happens."

"I'm sorry," Sasha says again. She reaches out to him, moving his hands away from the mug and clasping them in hers. It's an oddly intimate thing to do to a subordinate, but so is extracting information from them against their will. "I know it doesn't help, but I really am. Look, you want a drink? A proper one?"

"Why?" Jon asks, wary, though he hasn't let go of her hands. 

"Oh, fuck you, Jon," Sasha says. "We can go to the Loose Box. I'll get you something with an umbrella in it."

Jon smiles despite himself. "Yes, all right," he says. He tosses the packet in the recycling, and they head out together.

*

_iv. waiting for the reaper_

"Choose, Archivist," says Oliver Banks, and Jon chooses. The funny thing is, he wakes up for a while anyway. It doesn't make sense to go from non-alive to dead, or so the great powers have decreed it: you have to _live_ , to have life taken away. He wakes up and someone finds clothes for him and he's discharged, and lacking anything better to do, he goes home. Elias can't keep track of him any more – he's out of the bastard's purview forever, for certain values of 'forever' – but Georgie and Basira know where he is. Jon isn't surprised when Martin turns up on the doorstep of his flat with teabags and biscuits. 

"I was just going out," Jon says, partly because it's true, and partly just because he's tired. Whatever Martin is here for, it feels like too little, too late. His fault, as much as Martin's. Much more so, really. But that doesn't erase the fact of what's about to happen to him, what's already happening to him, a million million cellular lights going out. 

"Where?" Martin asks, nervously. He doesn't hide that he's looking Jon up and down, scanning for – something. A mark, a shadow, something other than Jon just as he is, thirty-something years old, in jeans and a faded Decemberists t-shirt that someone's going to have to take to the charity shop in due course. "I mean… sorry. I'll just, I'll go."

He's already moving to do just that. But Jon puts a hand on his arm, giving in despite himself. It's Martin, after all, and some things are incorruptible. "To the park," he says. "Come with me."

Martin still looks nervous, but he nods. Jon darts back inside to stow the teabags and biscuits, and locks the front door behind them. It's a beautiful day, the sky a crisp powder blue, which is why Jon decided to go out in the first place. If this is the last springtime in London he's ever going to see, he wants to actually _see_ it: apple blossom, daffodils, ice-cream vans and all. In Regent's Park there are kids playing, people queuing up for 99 flakes, a school group going two-by-two to the zoo. Jon eyes up an unoccupied towpath bench. If they pick up the pace, he and Martin will get to it before the family of five ambling along from the other direction.

"Jon," Martin says, finally, his voice cracking on the word. Jon decides the family of five can jump in the canal if they want a sit down. His hand lands on the curved wood and the assorted children scatter in disarray. 

"I'm here, Martin," he says, gesturing Martin to sit down. "I'm right here."

"I know what you're going to say," Martin bursts out, as though these are words he's been trying not to say for all the walk here and possibly all the six months before that. "That it's all hopeless, and tea and biscuits won't solve anything! But if you're really – Georgie and Basira said you were, anyway, then I don't. I don't know what else to _do_."

"You don't have to," Jon says, leaning back and closing his eyes. The sunlight on his skin is a an unaccustomed pleasure. "You don't have to do anything."

"But you're really—"

"I really am," Jon says. "I chose it. Stay human, and die." 

He hasn’t said that out loud to anyone before, and it feels like setting down a weight. Sitting here amid the canal boats and blossoms, it seems, not unreal exactly, but ordinary. A decision anyone might make.

"When?" Martin asks, when he's gathered himself to speak again. Something about all that unspoken emotion makes Jon want to grit his teeth. 

"I don't _know_ ," he says. "Not today. Not tomorrow. Definitely before Christmas, probably before the Last Night of the Proms."

"Jon," Martin says again, flinching as though he's been hit. "Don't."

"Don't what?" Jon says, frustrated. "Martin, I made a choice, and that's it. That's how it goes."

"That's it," Martin repeats, flatly. "You're just… giving up."

"No, I'm not," Jon says, without any particular emphasis. "I've fought, and won, and I'm not afraid of what comes next."

It's true, as he says it. Around him there are still the blossoms, the children, the queue for ice-cream. The small things of the world carry on, and whatever happens to Jonathan Sims now will consist of such small, sacred things, with no going back, or wanting to. 

"Martin," Jon says. "If I'm going to be here on this earth for another six weeks or months, I'd like to just… be here. I'd like tea and biscuits. I'd like to sit on park benches on the sun. Maybe coffee, not tea. That's really all I want. That, and you."

Martin looks up.

"If you'd like," Jon amends, but it's another thing that he learned was true as he said it. "For however long, anyway."

Martin takes a moment to speak. "You don't like tea?" he asks. "All this time?"

"Not really," Jon says. "I mean… I do drink it. But I'd rather not."

"Okay," Martin says, determination settling into the lines of his face. "I wish you'd told me before."

"I wish I had, too," Jon says. "Will you stay with me?"

"Yes," Martin says, almost a whisper. After a second, he adds: "We can get some coffee."

Jon finds Martin's hand and grips it, and neither of them speak for a minute or two. Jon doesn't want to say the next few words, not out here in this lovely antiseptic sunlight, but he knows it would be cruel not to. "Martin, I want you to stay. But I'm going to leave you again. No way out, not this time. I need to know that you understand that."

"Of course I understand that," Martin says, affectionate and impatient. "We should get a grinder on our way back, too. I hate instant."

"Yes," Jon says, "fine" - and they do get it, along with the coffee, and ice-cream, and fresh flowers.

*

_v. àiteachan nach gabh ruigsinn_

In the end, it falls to Martin to save the world. The situation has all the trappings of a parable or a trolley problem – _can you hurt one person, even the one you love, for the sake of everyone else_ – but Martin isn't troubled by that kind of philosophical romanticism and he doesn't hesitate. He could blind Jon, or gag him or stab him or any number of other things, but in the end, he opts for burning. Everything he needs it is right there ––Daisy left matches and a bottle of lamp oil under the sink, in case of power cuts–– and doing it this way has the benefit of dispensing with the statements. The flames consume the paper and melt the tapes, in addition to making Jon get up and start yelling obscenities rather than saying anything Jonah Magnus wants him to say.

"Also," Martin says, later, after the chaos and the shouting and the trip to A&E are over. "I thought… well. One of your hands has already been burned. I thought it might hurt less the second time."

"Well, it hurt a lot," Jon says, miffed. "You try having someone pour liquid kerosene and a lit match onto _your_ hands."

"You can, if you want," Martin says. "If you want to make us even."

Jon shudders. "Please, no. We'll only get more leaflets."

There were quite a lot of leaflets. Martin can't really blame the good people at NHS Highland, who took one look at Jon before giving him all their material on Abuse in Same Sex Relationships. Jon told the A&E staff that he appreciated their concern but it wasn't what it looked like, and half a day later he's still finding the cards with helpful telephone numbers that were stuffed into his coat pockets. 

"Well," Martin says. "That's fine, then."

"Fine," Jon echoes, still miffed, and then he laughs. It's a lovely sound, that Martin hasn't heard nearly enough, and it coincides with the sun coming out. The sky splits from grey to grey-green to cloudless in a matter of moments, then back again, the water shifting to match it. They're sitting on a couple of convenient rocks at the tideline below the cabin. The tiny, pebbly beach marks the end of a long, shallow sea inlet and is mostly thick with ducks. It's nothing like the Lonely. Martin likes it.

"It's okay," he says, when the laughter turns to crying, as he suspected it would. "Jon, you didn't do it. You didn't."

"I could have," Jon says, with muffled desperation. "I mean, how many people do you know who would have ended the world if their boyfriend hadn't _set them on fire_?"

"One," Martin says. He leans over and kisses Jon's cheek, and waits for the storm to settle a little. "What do we do next, do you think?"

"I have no idea," Jon says, staring down at his gauze-wrapped hands. "We get dinner in. Which either you have to feed me, or I have to drink through a straw."

Martin smiles, then brings up the subject, because one of them had to eventually and it should probably be him. He's the one who burnt the statements and tapes. "Speaking of dinner, and being, ah, hungry."

Jon gives him a rueful look. "Yeah. That."

"Can you," Martin says, but Jon saves him from having to ask the question.

“There are two people down in the village who have been truly frightened in their lives,” he says. “Plenty of others who got divorced and were afraid they’d never find love again, or lost a job and were afraid they’d lose the house. Only a couple who... you know.”

“Fell into an endless dark,” Martin says, at random. “Saw a terrible creature on the field of war. Or something.”

“Or something,” Jon says. “I don’t want to go after them. And I won’t, if you're here to stop me. And there's also… well."

He doesn't speak for a while, and for a minute Martin thinks he's going to start crying again. The light shifts as the clouds scud across the sky. Finally, Jon holds up his gauze-wrapped hands. "This hurts," he says.

"You've got a prescription for some painkillers," Martin says. "It's on the table in the cabin, we can go down into the village to fill it."

Jon shakes his head. "Not that. I mean, yes, let's do that. Just… it hurts. It hasn't healed instantly."

"Oh," Martin says. He's not sure why the implications of that didn't dawn on him earlier. "You mean…"

"Yeah." Jon meets his eyes. "Is it possible Elias only got one shot? Jonah Magnus, not Elias, I suppose, not that it matters. He tried, he failed, and now I'm… not. Not the Archivist, or whatever."

"Right," Martin says. It's a thought too large and extraordinary to fit into his head all in one go. He concentrates on the sea's edge in front of him, conscious again of how much it doesn't resemble the Lonely, and considers what to say next. "Jon, don't damage yourself."

"Yeah," Jon says, with a grim determination. "Don't get my hopes up, I know."

"No," Martin says. Jon deserves hope; they both do. "Just, don't take the bandages off early because you want to see. Let yourself heal."

"I will," Jon says. In that moment, Martin knows that Jon is among those he saved today. The two of them sit quietly, under that sheltering grey-green sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: references to self-mutilation; a brief reference to domestic violence; and considerable discussion of, and set-up for, character death (but it doesn't happen on-screen).
> 
> For those who read "in the chillest land" and hoped for more of the same, I am very sorry.


End file.
